The columnist seen with the Victor Hugo’s bust, at the ruins of the Old Summer Palace ground in Beijing. SO, the Olympics is done and dusted. In this 2024 version of the quadrennial world event, we witnessed beautiful sportsmanship, fantastic performance and atrocious behaviour.
The Olympics opened our eyes to the beauty of athletes displaying sportsmanship and camaraderie. Yes, that’s what the Olympics is all about. The Olympic founder, Pierre de Coubertin, was passionate about improving the world through sport.
He believed sport could help bring communities together, stop war and promote healthy competition free from discrimination. Then, we witnessed the superlative performance of the many athletes who pushed human physical boundaries to what was considered ‘not humanly possible’. Some of the losers to Pan Zangle’s world record 100m swim echoed this statement, ‘not humanly possible’ – not in admiration, but in envy.
Obviously, that Australian coach (who first said it) and his ilk are not history buffs. Seventy years ago, an English athlete, Roger Bannister, attempted to run the mile in under four minutes. Many experts said the human body was incapable of a sub-four-minute mile.
The heart might burst, said some. Well, Bannister ran the mile in 3:49.4 in 1954, at age 25, and at least half a dozen athletes broke the four-minute mile within two years after that.
Perhaps the Australian coach has forgotten the Olympics motto: “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (Faster, Higher, Stronger). Then came the sour grapes. These were erstwhile perennial winners, but were knocked off their perch by new winners.
They were so stung by this change of fortune that they slandered and cast aspersions against their rivals, accusing them of being chemically-aided. Leading the charge is the US, who have been ruling the roost for decades. I can quite understand why they are sour grapes.
Having occupied the podium for decades, they are tempted to regard their rivals as lesser beings. Thus, when these ‘lesser beings’ (perhaps more easily identified by the colour of their skin) jostled them off the top of the hill, the impact can be psychologically damaging. To save their reputation and cure their smarting ego, they behaved like the Fox of Aesop’s Fables.
In the story, ‘The Fox and the Grapes’, a fox saw a juicy bunch of grapes hanging from a trellised vine and yearned to have them. After several failed attempts to reach the grapes, the fox realised that he could never get them and walked away, saying that the grapes were sour anyway, so he never really wanted them. Wait a minute: I think I might have chosen the wrong story.
These sore Olympian losers are not saying that the grapes are sour. They know that they are sweet, but do not want others to have them. Some suggest that the losers’ angst is directed at people of colour.
Thus, it is simply racism. That it is part of the manifestation of the ‘White Supremacy Syndrome’. However, I contend that it is more than that.
Something deeper is at work here. We note that the main attack is against the athletes of China. The obvious reason is that China almost displaced the USA at the top of the podium.
There is even a suggestion that China should be banned from the next Olympics, to be held in Los Angeles, in the US of A. Well, that’s one way of defeating your main rival, and they have done it successfully against Russia. The Olympics are just sports.
Why go berserk over the battle of supremacy over what is essentially a human pastime activity? I submit that it is a battle over something more significant – the battle of ideologies. After the Second World War, the USA emerged as the world’s top dog, a virtual hegemon, trumpeting that the ‘cry of democracy with American characteristics’ is the only paradigm of national development. Then, in 1949, a country that had just emerged from what it itself called ‘a hundred years of humiliation’ had the temerity to proclaim an alternative path: “Socialism with Chinese characteristics.
” The country is China. China won so many gold medals at the Olympics that the Olympic site reverted to the sound of the Chinese anthem. I was curious about that anthem and searched the Internet.
Surprise! Surprise! I found a rendition by a famous American singer, Paul Robeson, a recording made in 1949! Below are the lyrics of the anthem: “Arise, we who refuse to be slaves; “With our very flesh and blood, “Let us build our new Great Wall! “The peoples of China are at their most critical time, “Everybody must roar defiance. “Arise! Arise! Arise! “Millions of hearts with one mind, “Brave the enemy’s gunfire, “March on! “Brave the enemy’s gunfire.” In 1949, a country devastated by war and in abject poverty released this defiant song.
The world regarded it as sheer bravado and scoffed at it. China was not even acknowledged as a country by the world. From 1949 to October 1971, it did not exist in the roster of the world body, the United Nations (UN).
During that limbo period, they had to produce goods for their population and external trade. Their goods were of such inferior quality that they earned the label of ‘Made in China, cheap and nasty’. Then, as if out of the blue, this erstwhile ‘Sick Man of Asia’ started to produce things and construct infrastructure to facilitate the development of the world.
No wonder the President of the USA, Joe Biden, in one of his important speeches to the nation on March 26, 2021, said: “China has an overall goal ...
to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world. “That’s not going to happen on my watch ..
.” Sure, China can now produce things that match or surpass the world. But is that a reason to be freaked out and be pathological in opposing it? I was nonplussed.
A few months ago, I came across a statue of Victor Hugo – a famous French poet, playwright, novelist, statesman and human rights activist – during my trip to Beijing a few months ago. On a plaque on the pedestal was inscribed his famous quote: “Nothing else in the world..
. not all the armies..
. is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” * The opinions expressed in this article are the columnist’s own and do not reflect the view of the newspaper.
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